Richard Boock: Memo to Ponting - shut up and get on with it

Remarkable. Just when we thought we had seen it all; an Australian captain not only acknowledging the existence of a "spirit within the game", but even accusing the opposition of not playing within it.

Where will it all end, you might ask, and who knows? Brett Lee condemning beamers?

Shane Warne promoting fidelity? What about the chances of Glenn McGrath discovering humility?

If ever England needed confirmation that they have Australia on the run, it came with Ricky Ponting's bleating after his fourth test run-out, and this week's subsequent complaints about the use of replacement fieldsmen.

Not since 1932-33, when Bill Woodfull made his famous crack about Douglas Jardine's great leg-theory, has an Australian skipper ventured so publicly into the field of morality, and with so little justification.

The most besieged Australian captain since Kim Hughes, Ponting was fined 75 per cent of his match fee for remonstrating with the umpire and shouting at the England balcony following his second innings dismissal.

But possibly more amusing have been his ensuing comments, and particularly the notion that his team have been somehow disadvantaged by England's unwillingness to work within Australia's home-made code of ethics.

"I think it is an absolute disgrace that the spirit of the game is being treated like that," he told a Melbourne radio station this week.

"[Duncan] Fletcher has known right through the summer this is something we haven't been happy with, but it's continued.

"He knows it's something that's got under our skins and I've had enough of it, and I let him know that, and most of his players too."

Ponting's anger involved the belief that England were deliberately spelling their bowlers for the maximum allowable time, so that they could receive massages and physiotherapy before and after bowling.

"It's within the rules of the game, but it's just not within the spirit of the game, which is what we're all trying to uphold," he said, without so much of a choking noise, or a burst of sarcastic laughter.

Hypocrisy apparently knows no bounds within the Australian dressing room.

No sooner had Ponting made his comments, than McGrath, who patronised England with his "5-0" jibe at the start of the series, was jumping in with support and perpetuating the myth that the Australians had a cricketing conscience.

"Test cricket to us is played by the guys who are in the team," he said. "If you are not fit enough or you are looking at ways to keep your players fresh, I think that's not quite in the spirit of the game."

Well, he should know, shouldn't he?

After all, it was McGrath who opted to bowl full pitched and wide outside off-stump when the heat went on at Brisbane four years ago to prevent Chris Cairns from stealing the first test on the wire.

And who spat in the direction of Brian Lara a few months previously?

Faced with playing within the spirit, or the rules of the game, Australian captains have invariably settled for the latter - as demonstrated by Greg Chappell's decision to employ an underarm bowler in 1982, Steve Waugh's go-slow against the West Indies at the 1999 World Cup, and again with his instructions to bowl wide of the crease at Brisbane in 2001.

The ultimate irony is that the existing time constraints on players were only imposed after the antics of the 1981 Australians and, in particular, fast-bowler Dennis Lillee, who took to enjoying a shower and a change of shirt at the end of each spell.

Ponting probably doesn't appreciate it at the moment.